Kamala Harris’s office made a fuss over a Vogue cover that showed the vice president in sneakers before President Biden’s office ordered him to back off, saying cover concerns were “first world issues,” according to a new book.
A few weeks before Inauguration Day, Harris was scheduled to appear in an issue of Vogue, but the VP was reportedly caught off guard when a leaked cover image showed her most casual look from the shoot, wearing black Converse and a black dress. tight pants.
The photo, Vogue wrote, shows “an accessible but not overly grandiose image of the future VP.”
Harris expected the cover to feature a more stately photograph of her wearing a powder blue suit with her arms crossed in front of her. “Harris was injured. She felt humiliated by the magazine, asking aides, “Could Vogue portray another world leader in this way?” New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns write in their forthcoming book It Won’t Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.
Nevertheless, the outfits for her were chosen by Harris employees, and not by the full-time Vogue team.
Harris’ debut at Vogue sparked an online outcry, with some accusing the magazine of “lightening” the vice president’s skin and others accusing Vogue of “lazy” editing.
Harris’ incoming press secretary, Simon Sanders, took the matter directly to Anna Wintour, Vogue’s preeminent editor-in-chief. Wintour countered, admitting that she chose the cover herself because she thought it made Harris “attractive,” according to excerpts from a book provided by Politico.
A few weeks before her inauguration day, Harris was scheduled to appear in an issue of Vogue, but the VP was reportedly caught off guard when a leaked cover image depicted her most casual look from the photo shoot.
‘Disrespectful’: Vogue released two covers, one for the print edition and one digital alternative (pictured), which is an image endorsed by Harris, 56, and her team.
A source in the vice president’s office told that Harris specifically requested a photo of the blue suit and only learned that Converse’s photo was used on the cover after it was leaked online. However, a Vogue insider denied that Harris’s team ever requested approval for the photo or cover, and insisted that no specific cover shot had been agreed upon.
The new chief of staff, Tina Fluornoy, contacted a senior Biden campaign official. But Biden was in the midst of major political upheaval early in his administration, not to mention the nation was focused on the recent January 6 attack and the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘[T]A Biden adviser told Flourny that now was not the time to go to war over a comparatively trivial aesthetic issue. Tina, the adviser said these are first world problems,” the excerpt reads.
The Vogue cover was just the first of many disagreements between the offices of president and vice president.
“Some of Harris’ advisers felt that the president’s almost all-white entourage did not give the vice president the respect she deserves,” write Martin and Burns. “Harris was worried that Biden staff looked down on her; she obsessed over real and perceived snubs that the West Wing found tiresome.”
Harris even sent Fluornoy to scold Biden’s staff for not standing up when she entered the room, as they do for the president. Fluornoy contacted Biden adviser Anita Dunn. “The vice president took it as a sign of disrespect,” the book says.
Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour admitted that she chose the cover herself because she thought Harris looked “like”.
In comments to Politico, Dunn neither confirmed nor denied the conversation. She said she wasn’t going to comment other than to say that everyone in the West Wing has the utmost respect for the Vice President and the hard work she does for this President and our country. Especially me.
Harris also reportedly asked for a softball foreign policy assignment that would prove an easy win and bolster her reputation on the global stage. Instead, she was nicknamed the “border king” and appointed by the politically tense countries of the Northern Triangle.
Staff discussed the possibility of the Vice President overseeing Nordic relations, a low-risk diplomatic assignment that could help Harris adjust to the international stage, welcoming places like Oslo and Copenhagen.
“White House aides have dismissed the idea and privately ridiculed it. It irritated Biden’s aides even more when they learned that the vice president wanted to schedule a major speech to lay out his foreign policy vision. Biden aides vetoed the idea.”
Biden then assigned Harris to deal with immigration and its “root causes” in Latin America’s Northern Triangle. Harris was unhappy, noting that Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala were in Biden’s portfolio as vice president. Given the outcry over the surge in migration, Harris’ aides considered the appointment politically undesirable.
Harris led the campaign by publicly emphasizing that she was assigned to the “root cause” and was not responsible for the crowded and overcrowded facilities on the border. She hissed at the “frontier czar” label and “didn’t hesitate to chide Biden for describing her appointment that way.”
Then, amid leaked reports of chaos, toxicity, and dysfunction in the vice president’s office, Biden himself called his staff and threatened to fire anyone who went to the press with compromising information.